Graph Manifolds and Taut Foliations Mark Brittenham1, Ramin Naimi, and Rachel Roberts2 Introduction
Graph manifolds and taut foliations 1 2 Mark Brittenham , Ramin Naimi, and Rachel Roberts UniversityofTexas at Austin Abstract. We examine the existence of foliations without Reeb comp onents, taut 1 1 foliations, and foliations with no S S -leaves, among graph manifolds. We show that each condition is strictly stronger than its predecessors, in the strongest p os- sible sense; there are manifolds admitting foliations of eachtyp e which do not admit foliations of the succeeding typ es. x0 Introduction Taut foliations have b een increasingly useful in understanding the top ology of 3-manifolds, thanks largely to the work of David Gabai [Ga1]. Many 3-manifolds admit taut foliations [Ro1],[De],[Na1], although some do not [Br1],[Cl]. To date, however, there are no adequate necessary or sucient conditions for a manifold to admit a taut foliation. This pap er seeks to add to this confusion. In this pap er we study the existence of taut foliations and various re nements, among graph manifolds. What we show is that there are many graph manifolds which admit foliations that are as re ned as wecho ose, but which do not admit foliations admitting any further re nements. For example, we nd manifolds which admit foliations without Reeb comp onents, but no taut foliations. We also nd 0 manifolds admitting C foliations with no compact leaves, but which do not admit 2 any C such foliations. These results p oint to the subtle nature b ehind b oth top ological and analytical assumptions when dealing with foliations. A principal motivation for this work came from a particularly interesting exam- ple; the manifold M obtained by 37/2 Dehn surgery on the 2,3,7 pretzel knot K .
[Show full text]